Uncategorized – The Jackie Bloghttps://thejackieblog.com
Life Is Funny
Mon, 21 Jan 2019 22:56:18 +0000 en
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/267ddba32f99097dc9b2939fa588a00d?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngUncategorized – The Jackie Bloghttps://thejackieblog.com
Let me talk nerdy to you.https://thejackieblog.com/2017/10/20/let-me-talk-nerdy-to-you/
https://thejackieblog.com/2017/10/20/let-me-talk-nerdy-to-you/#commentsFri, 20 Oct 2017 12:00:14 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=6896Guys. My new cat stopped peeing directly beside my face in the middle of the night, and my old cat stopped punching her in the face when I’m not looking. I’m getting sleep! Glory, hallelujah – the dark clouds have parted and I’m no longer up at 3am scrubbing mattresses and throwing out rugs and wondering if all my life will amount to is cat dander and piss (it still might).

So here I am! All shiny and new! My floors are clean, my apartment could entertain a guest who won’t immediately seek professional help for me, and things are really looking up. It was scary there for a bit.

In the midst of my cat urination adventures, I skipped writing and instead sat with an old friend who asked me to chime in on his podcast. It’s a dungeons and dragons thing, and it may appeal to you if:

you just now read the phrase “dungeon master father” and your mind is dizzy with wonder

you like to listen to people talk about dungeons and dragons

you’ve always wondered what my actual voice sounds like

you need something nerdy to help you drift off to sleep at night

you need proof that I’m still out in the world, doing things

you’ll just go along with anything because you can’t resist a link

One could say this is a Lollipop Tuesday adventure. I was pretty worried about being part of a podcast, but hey: it was pretty easy. All I had to do was say stuff. It makes me wonder, you know – what are the sorts of things that can still strike enough fear into my heart to qualify as a Lollipop Tuesday (skydiving)? What am I avoiding because I’ve already decided I’ll hate it or might die? (Skydiving).

Anyway, while I ponder whether I’m willing to jump to my possible death in support of a blog mission and constant content, enjoy this venture into a small portion of my odd upbringing. Click the picture above, or just click right here.

The Dave and I have been together for a long time. A very long time. Friends have had several full relationships within the cycle of our forever love – some have even gotten married and had children. There are a variety of factors that have contributed to this that really aren’t anyone’s business, but a large part of it has been both of our desires to do what we want in our own time. Stunning concept, I know.

But we’re coming up against that natural desire to send carbon copies of ourselves out into the earth, and when I combine my that with the need to simplify health insurance, income taxes, and a variety of other administrative hassles, it appears it’s time to throw in the towel and get married. So now we have to deal with all of that malarkey.

I’ve never really been the kind of girl to sit around and dream up what my future wedding will be. I’ve dabbled from time to time – had a private Pinterest board or two – but mid-pinning I’m reminded of everything that comes with a wedding and I’m overcome with a sense of dread. So let’s talk about those things, shall we? Because nowhere, in the piles and aisles of ‘how-tos’ for brides, have I found a single book on “how to get married when you’re anxious, awkward, and broke.”

Some Crappy Things that Come With a Wedding

Thing 1 – The Attention: This has always been an issue, but with more social media apps than I can keep up with, it’s reached new woeful heights. There’s the engagement announcement, the wedding announcement, the constant questions about both. We can post it on Facebook casually or come up with some clever picture. Then do we roll it out across several platforms for the folks who are only on one? What about the people who aren’t on social media at all? Should we call them first or after? What if I need to do breathing exercises to talk on the phone? Then, I have to deal with people actually responding. Imagine how many clever jokes there are for a couple who has waited as long as us.

Work announced I got a promotion and six weeks later people are still exclaiming excitedly to me in person about it, which makes me want to tear off my skin and run away every time. If that’s a miniature test, the backlash from wedding-related announcements is going to make me self-implode. I’m already tired. People are already mad; I can feel it. Which is a shame, because we haven’t even gotten to:

Thing 2: The Invitation List: This is where it all goes way downhill. Even if I’ve done a proper job of announcing it and people were generally cool and I didn’t spontaneously combust from stress and anxiety, I still have to figure out this part: who gets to come? Are they the people who should come or the people who I want to come? Do Dave and I just figure out how much money we have (none) and how many people it can feed (none), divide that in half (zero) and then invite that many people (yes)? I guess I’m supposed to make rules for how guests get filtered through the decision-making and then extend the rules consistently and fairly throughout the process, but the rule I want to make is that they get to come if we want them in the room. That’s never actually how it happens. Even if we would be lucky enough to be the first couple in the history of all weddings to only invite the people we actually want to come, it means there will absolutely be more of:

Thing 3: The Drama: Even if a parallel Disney universe porthole opens up and sends me tiny magical mice to help me deep-breathe through the spotlight that comes with announcing, and even if some of those magical mice are deployed throughout the earth to explain to some people why they weren’t invited and others why they were, and even if no one has anything negative to say about that process (hilarious), there’s still going to be drama. Beyond the topic of who is supposed to come, people are going to have feelings about where it is, when it is, how long it is, what it’s like, where they sit, what the music is, if the favors are good enough, whether the food was good, and whether we chose the appropriate types and number of socially awkward wedding traditions. I have to say, I’m not really a traditional kind of gal. That part where single women scramble for the flowers publicly? That part where men go after the garter that’s been up the bride’s thigh? That part where a random man puts his hands up a random gal’s thigh in celebration of them being the two lucky catches? Has totally grossed me out forever. The dollar dance? Super weird. The part where the audience has to watch a bunch of different traditional dances take place? The cake in the face or maybe not in the face? The speeches, the toasts, the terror. The bachelorette and bachelor parties, the wedding shower. I have a lot of not awesome feelings about these sometimes requirements. Don’t get me wrong: folks should do what they want at their own weddings; it’s just that people seem to think I should also have to do what they want at mine. The only one I’ve been a fan of to date is a cookie table. I feel like a lot of people can really get behind that. Though I have to admit that’s a bit at odds with my issues surrounding:

Thing 4: The Work: Man, that’s a lot of work already and I haven’t event organized the event yet. I have to find a venue, probably think about making sure it looks all right, invite the people I argued about coming, track which ones will come and which ones won’t and guess on the rest, book and confirm and coordinate, make sure people know what to do and where to go, find some food and drink for them, probably get a cake and some entertainment or something… and then there’s all the worrying. That will probably be the most work of all. The amount of worrying that I will do and the time I will spend talking about all that worrying instead of doing something much more productive: that’s the heavy load right there. Speaking of heavy loads, it’s about time we address the elephant in the post:

Thing 5: The Money: This is the core of it, isn’t it? How insane is the money situation with weddings? Sure, someone will say something about how I can make it as expensive as I want or something. Or someone will offer to pay or help. Or I’ll be encouraged to put more work in to save more money – as if there isn’t enough work already. Yeah – I could try to figure out how to get a free or near-free venue. I could force a pot luck on everyone and tell them that because of our near-free venue, I probably won’t have a way to keep anything hot or cold so good luck. I could throw a pig in the ground with fire and say vegetarians be damned because I don’t have the money for pasta salads on the side (sorry gluten free folk). I could borrow everything possible and I’ll still end up paying a nice sum of money to make all of this happen or to at least make it happen in a way that’s worth all the work. And remember, people are going to have opinions on spending their money, taking off work, and driving some place to eat lukewarm food in the middle of the woods while a bunch of people just hang out.

As many times as I run through everything in my head, sometimes I still get to the place where I wonder if I just have to do it anyway because that’s what people do. What if I can get the money together? Then should I just do it?

But every time I come back to these three things that are definitely better than a wedding.

Three Things that Are Better than a Wedding

Thing 1: Starting a Foundation

I’m not even kidding. You can start a foundation with 5-10K – which, let’s be honest, is what we’re talking about. And that’s optimistic. Wouldn’t it be awesome if, when Dave and I got married, we celebrated by starting a philanthropic fund? Instead of all that money going into a one-time event, it can go toward something constant and sustainable that lets us fondly reflect on the spirit of giving every time we gift it.

Thing 2: Getting a House

So I recognize that this is something that I aspire to mostly because I’ve waited long enough in life to actually think it’s more practical to have a house than to have a party. But really. If I have to have a ceremony, I should just have it in whatever is my house-to-be. Anyone who wants to help pay can go in on that down payment with us. We can get celebrate in the back yard, have a proper potluck, and sleep for the first evening in our home together. If folks feel hellbent on wedding gifts, they can be focused on the housewarming celebration, which also takes the pressure off to have traditional wedding events and dances.

Thing 3: Other people take us out to celebrate

I think this is in the realm of my million dollar idea series (along with Puppy Amusement Parks). We send invitations out to people to let them know we’re getting married. To celebrate, we welcome them to give us a call or email us to set up a date to go out together and celebrate. If that’s too intimate for them, then I guess we aren’t close enough to warrant a special celebration. And if they don’t want to or can’t pay for it – then I’m sure they can empathize with the fact that I feel the same way.

So there you have it: I’m adding to the bridal guide canon with this completely free how-to thinkguide support piece thing. No need to thank me, anxious dwellers of the earth. …Just don’t hold it against me if I fall privy to the trap of weddings and have to eat my blog post soon in shame. Don’t worry, if I change my mind you’ll know – I’ll feel pressured to make sure you get an invitation.

]]>https://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/22/a-brides-guide-for-the-anxious-awkward-and-broke/feed/25jacklynmariebphoto weddingCats and KonMarihttps://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/11/cats-and-konmari/
https://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/11/cats-and-konmari/#commentsThu, 11 May 2017 12:35:43 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=5663I just want you to know that after my last blog post, Monk was really lovely for about three straight days. I started to feel a little bad for publicly shaming him. Then one day I was washing my face and as I bent over to rinse, all soapy-eyed and disoriented, suddenly he launched from the back of the bathroom toilet to the back of my body. I stood up and yelped and he got so scared that he dragged his claws down my back to hang on for dear life.

I can’t do this anymore. I’ve been thinking for a while that I’m starting to look older than I feel, and while a portion of that is just the reality of aging, a serious part of it is that I wake up at least 3 times that I can remember the next morning from Monk just pushing shit off of shelves and onto the floor. All night long. I can play with him, feed him, let him sleep on my face, open windows for him, let him push through all the blinds and break every single set in the house – doesn’t matter. He thrives in chaos. He wants to watch the world burn.

I feel bad for whichever future cat has to put up with him. I’m just hoping it helps him chill out. Probably best if it’s a really fat one with a strong batting arm. And maybe an unnerving stare. It’ll be super weird and change the vibe of my apartment, but I’ll probably be able to do something about these bags under my eyes.

Partially because of Monk’s inability to allow things to be on open, horizontal surfaces, and partially because I recently read Spark Joy: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I’ve developed a sort of obsessive habit of organization and systemization in my house.

One would think that with all my office jobs, I would have employed approaches to organization in my own home, but it really hasn’t worked that way for me. You might recall this from my frequent posts about the disgusting filth that is my apartment. If you need to get caught up, I think this shining diamond where I admit to hanging fly tape around my apartment and lived in filth until two flies mated on me will do the trick.

Apparently that’s the final straw for me: flies fornicating and turning my limbs into their love den.

Anyway I read this book on the life changing magic of cleaning up your crap, and it really flipped a switch for me. And like anything good in my life, I’ll just way overdo it until it’s actually kind of harmful.

If you’re not familiar, Spark Joy is a book about the KonMari method. You might be familiar with some jokes about it. They boil down the KonMari philosophy to hugging all of your possessions to feel whether or not they bring you joy and then ditching them if they don’t. It’s quite a bit more complex than that, but I have to admit: she does tell you to hug things. I skipped that part. I can get a sense of my level of joy from just looking at something. It comes along with my knack for being distant and judgy.

The more complex elements of the book involve proper use of containers, assigning everything a place, and giving everything you own enough room to breathe. Clutter is actively sought out and destroyed. Boxes begin to form systems that then run the regular functions of your life almost automatically.

This might not be true for everyone, but it’s true for me.

I took a note from the KonMari method that I needed to arrange my life in a way that best suited the things I do every day. Why, oh why do I get my makeup out of the bag every day, use it, and put it back in the bag? I should just keep it out and find a way to present it so that looks all right while it’s out so and I won’t feel like the place is a mess. Also: why do I put the things I often need in hard-to-reach, ridiculous places? Why do I let a cupboard in my house be continually overflowing so that every time I open the door I get upset?

Of course, this sort of life-changing magic is what I probably need on my quest for super humanism, so I’ve basically gone section by section through my house and eliminated these occurrences. I know where almost everything is, I have implemented quick and easy systems, and my whole apartment is almost entirely customized to me.

I think it’s beginning to be a problem.

I have a lot of systems now, and I really don’t like things to be out in the open. If I have clutter in an area because I’m working on a project, the materials all need to be in a basket or a bowl. All the cheese in my fridge goes in its own basket. Things I have to do are organized by section and type. I now have a To Do List template that breaks up my to-dos into correspondences, errands, tasks, and notes. Yesterday I asked our graphic designer at work if she could make me a desktop screen for my computer that was separated into labeled sections for my desktop icons to be visually filed.

I started to really wonder if I was having an issue when I insisted that my dirty silverware sit in a bowl in the sink because the look of them scattered all over the bottom of the sink made me kind of crazy.

At least I’m not hugging them all?

Admittedly, I think things are getting a bit out of hand. I was meal prepping for the week (putting lunches together for work) and decided to overhaul my kitchen cupboard with boxes for each type of lunch item: grains, bars, spreads…I just think it’s gone too far.

Of course I can’t just go back to letting things go; I have a monster cat on the prowl and if I leave my craft supplies out mid-project he will knock them to the ground. I can’t leave a ponytail holder out without him putting it in his teeth and carrying it to a hidden nest he’s made somewhere in the underbelly of my living room couch (THAT’S WHERE THEY ALL GO). He has some strange obsession with seltzer water that means I can’t even put my drink on a table and walk way. If I do, he’ll knock the entire thing over and act like it was that way when he found it. Like I said: he just wants to watch the world burn.

So I guess I need to start searching the cat adoption sites again. Actually, a cat café just opened up near me (this is real. This is not a test). It’s a place where you can get coffee and hang out on the bottom floor or go play with adoptable cats on the second floor. Maybe I’ll just go take a look real quick – you know, just to see what’s there.

]]>https://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/11/cats-and-konmari/feed/16jacklynmariebcat facefoot eaterMy Cat is the Spawn of Satanhttps://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/01/my-cat-is-the-spawn-of-satan/
https://thejackieblog.com/2017/05/01/my-cat-is-the-spawn-of-satan/#commentsMon, 01 May 2017 13:00:39 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=5484I need to book an exorcism for my cat.

No, not my beloved Lola. This is a new one.

Unfortunately, my near and dear Lola Bear recently got very ill and slowly passed away. It hurt so very badly and my parents tried to help make it better by bringing me a seemingly innocent-looking spawn of Satan to help with the pain. Meet the hellchild with which they’ve cursed my life:

Now, I know that your first impression of Monk (The Monkfish, Monkey, Monk) might be to trust him. Or to assume his innocence. It’s okay, I understand: he does look so cute that you just want to squeeze all the life juice out of him – but it’s just a tool to lure you in so that he can badger-jab you in the face.

As Monk grew up, I tried to remember that things he does as a tiny kitten may be charming, but when he does them as a cat, they will hurt. So I tried to remain vigilant in his training: no table tops, no eating out of the garbage or from my leftover food, no flying from all dimensions of space toward my head, etc. Basically, the things I never had to worry about with Lola – but I was at least twelve years out of practice in my cat training, and honestly guys I don’t think I did a very good job. Because though I did try to back off the number of times I would let him play with my hands instead of a toy, I did also simultaneously encourage regular Ninja Training Courses with Dave.

Dave is a forest child and in his heart, he can speak to animals. (He frequently scolds me for talking down to cats or talking about them where they can hear me.) Because of this hypersensitivity, when it comes to animal training, Dave’s skills really shine and I wanted Monk to benefit from it. And has he.

Monk can do flips in the air, scale the most difficult of mountains (fire places), and is generally a badass. He can lurk in the tiniest of corner spaces, hunt down even the best hidden cat toy, and keep up with a laser pointer with no sweat. When he was little, these skills were pretty darn exciting. Now that he’s older, they’re terrifying.

Three separate times during this post, I looked at him and thought: what a cute kitty! and pet him. And then he full-body hooked around my arm and rabbit kicked the bejeezus out of me. Three separate times.

Oh, and he’s bigger now:

He’s up there at the top. See him? And yeah, I know – he still looks pretty cute. But then ask yourself: …how did he even get up there? I do love this cat, but he is no Lola. He was born straight from Satan’s fire. How did he get up there, you ask? With the power of Lucifer.

Now, I understand that lots of cats are assholes and that’s just the way it is. But you have to believe me: this is something unnatural. The list of grievances is quite large, and means that when someone is catsitting for me, I have to prepare ample notes in advance. They include:

Sometimes he’ll climb up your legs or back and begin to eat your hair

Sometimes he’ll hop on your face in bed and…eat your hair.

He is a master ninja and it won’t take long for him to learn how to dart out your door the moment it opens. Be prepared with some sort of Monkblocker when you enter.

He’ll frequently weave in and out of your legs as you walk. Stopping and letting him go first won’t make a difference – he walks when you walk. You’re going to hit him in the face; it’s okay – it’s just a fact.

He doesn’t like to be left out, so he meows when you close a door on him. Even the bathroom.

If you don’t play with him enough during the day, he’ll be batshit crazy while you try to sleep.

He eats plants and climbs on things and does every other imaginable terrible cat thing.

He’ll attack your hands if you let him.

He love, love, loves a good laser pointer session. Be careful – he’ll run directly into things if you let him. He already suffers from a few minor concussions.

He’s obsessed with seltzer water. If you leave a container of unfinished seltzer water out, he will immediately come knock it over. Please don’t leave it unattended.

It goes on. Just like this. For a long time.

Now, I have read at least the first forty available articles on what to do about a hypercrazy cat, but they haven’t worked. I’ve talked to the vet, who suggested scaring the bejeezus out of him when he’s doing something wrong by crashing something loud near him (Monk couldn’t care less). I’ve played directly before dinner (nope), played at least two hours a day (nope), moved eating times around (nope), ignored him (nope), paid too much attention to him (nope), yelled at him (nope), took things away from him (nope), moved my entire apartment around to accommodate for him (nope)– I’m simply out of ideas. I think he’s possessed.

I’ve been cranking down my social calendar in the hopes that spending even more time with him will help his issues. So I’m officially moving into a deeply unhealthy relationship. I’ve thought about getting another cat to help him cope with whatever his internal struggle is, but I’m worried he’ll take it out on me that I show affection for another. Or worse: that the demon in him will move from being to being, and I will double the horror of my plight. So there may be only one option left: an exorcism.

I think I read somewhere in those forty articles I googled that it takes a level 35 cat lady mage to conduct a proper exorcism – but that’s a pretty high level cat lady and no doubt the path I must go on to seek her out is dark and full of terrors. Still – this is no way to live and I have no real choice. I must go into the unknown – to trace the untraceable.

I got lost looking for the bathroom in Mad Mex in a recent voyage out into the tundra of humankind.

Dave and I decided to have a date at a local favorite of ours – a Mexican-Southeast-Asian-Spanish-American foodstuffs joint. One of its claims to fame is the Gobblerito – each Thanksgiving season they’ll stuff a burrito with an entire Thanksgiving dinner for the citizens of Pittsburgh. It’s an act of patriotism if you ask me. Anyway, this place has a few locations around the city and we ventured out to a new one.

You should know somewhere, here, at the beginning of this long, humiliating story that I have a sort of disconnect in my brain with navigation. From time to time, I will exit a store and go the opposite of the way I intend because my brain throws away important notes too soon. This difficulty getting from here to there has some funny side effects. For example, on occasion, I have a great deal of anxiety in a public place trying to find a restroom that is not clearly marked.

Dave, however, has no problem at all with tedious unknowns such as these. He’s bold – an adventurer at heart – and when we’re out in the forest of humanity, he’s happy to blaze a trail. He’ll launch down a dark hallway in a gas station in the middle of nowhere because he can sense a public restroom emanating from the corner of the establishment. He’ll get up from the dinner table at a restaurant and just follow his instinctual juices to magically locate one. He’ll boldly go in a direction until he gets what he needs, and if he can’t find it, he simply grabs a random person and asks them.

I, however, do not operate in this fashion. Over time, Dave has begun to locate bathrooms for me in advance when we appear to be in a place where they are not clearly marked. This is because he is an enchanted creature and is somehow charmed by and happy to care for my severe slights. I’m a lucky dame.

So we’re at Mad Mex. We head in, talk to the hostess, have a seat near the door. I have to pee. We do the initial sit-down things, get comfy and whatnot and I head toward what I believe to be the bathroom location – a long, dark hallway that is within my line of sight.

As I approach the long, beaded curtain that’s hanging at the front of the hall, separating it from the main restaurant area, I start to have doubts.

Man, why is that hallway so dark? You’d think they would illuminate it really well so folks have an easier time getting to the bathroom.

I notice a couple right by the hall.

Oh – maybe it’s because the hall is so close to these people eating and they’re trying to keep the light low.

I arrive at the curtain and hold out my arm to swipe the curtain aside when my hand is met with a solid metal, black door.

OH! It’s dark because it’s a door, not a hallway, Jackie.

I begin to push on the door but it won’t open because there’s a long, silver crash bar running its length that has to be pushed to open it instead. I wonder for a moment why they seat people next to this door – I’m practically in their laps just trying to get to the bathroom and I’m interrupting their dinner by accessing this back hall.

It’s then that my eyes notice the Emergency Exit sign in front of me for the first time– and the gaze of the couple who, indeed, I was virtually in the laps of. They spent the 2 minutes prior watching a restaurant patron get up from her seat, walk toward them, and proceed to paw at the emergency exit for no perceivable reason.

I’m mortified, and they know that I know they know what’s going on.

I quickly give up my endeavor and backtrack to safety by David where we were sat. I figure he’ll help me sort it out later. (Enchantment, et cetera.) But on my way back, I can’t spot him. I know I only went one straight direction to the supposed restroom hallway, but I’m searching every single face along the windows of the restaurant and none of them look even remotely like him. Given my circumstances, I did not want to make another close proximity visual mistake, so I kept walking. I walked down the length of the restaurant and arrived back at the hostess station. I stopped to think..

May I help you, Miss?

The hostess was talking to me. Tiny butterflies flapped up my stomach and fluttered in my mouth. I couldn’t ask her if she remembered where she sat us – I’d look like a moron. So I tried to think of something clever to say to explain my standing there dumbfounded, but just as I began to speak, I felt the hot hellgaze of the couple by the curtain who I just played sidedish to. They could still see me. And they knew I knew.

Desperate to release the steadily building pressure, I assured the hostess I was fine, and walked directly out of the restaurant.

I distinctly recall having a moment here where I was a little in awe at the depths I will go to in order to handle a social awkwardness that perhaps only I sense. And nonetheless, I’m passing the hostess, leaving Dave in the restaurant, and headed to God-knows-where. I’m not really in control at this point. The story has been written and I have to stay on the path to completion.

I’m hyper aware of the low patron base in the restaurant at this time and the clear view through the large windows that the hostess still has of me as she wonders why I’m already leaving when we haven’t yet been served. It occurs to me that I should just pretend to get something out of the van that I need, so I decide to do that and move toward the van with intention. Once there, I realize that I don’t have the keys. Convincing myself that the hostess is still watching my every move, I play the narrative through and pretend to just look through the windows and into the van for what I need, then gesture to myself that I don’t know where it is with a hearty shrug, and head back to the restaurant in the hopes that I can locate Dave if I have a nice, fresh start.

I head back in after my own personal Mr. Bean impression in the parking lot and see Dave sitting just a few tables in on my right. I glance to see if the Hellgazers are still at the end of the row. They are.

Dave’s mouth is ajar as I return to our table and he asks me where I went. He was sitting there, I got up, pawed at a door, and walked directly past him and out of the restaurant. I got him all caught up on the vast narrative that was building inside my head.

It had been about 10 minutes at this point. And no, I hadn’t. I tried to find the restroom but I failed in public and the hot breeze of Hellgazers were preventing me from exploring again. I had resolved to hold it.

Dave, incredulous, assured me that if I turned left at the end of the row, the bathrooms were clearly marked ahead. I told him I was going to wait until the couple cleared. He encouraged me, and I took off toward the second supposed restroom.

Mad Mex does this thing with their bathroom doors that some companies like to do where they indicate the sex assignment of the restroom with an artistic mural. Worried about adding to Hellgazers’ comedic narrative of their evening, I decided to make a quick decision – one of the bathroom doors was clearly ajar and I gravitated toward it. Relieved to see bathroom tile and stalls, I stepped inside and looked up to see the shining white butt cheeks of a gentleman who was relieving himself at the urinals. I went to the wrong restroom.

I excused and ejected myself into the hallway to return to the gaze of the couple and quickly pawed at the women’s restroom door. After fumbling for and failing to find a knob or handle, I gave it a heavy push. I jolted inside the empty ladies room and breathed a sigh of relief. I had escaped the gazers, and if I stayed in the restroom long enough, I was pretty sure they would leave before I had to go back out.

I did my business and washed my hands and suddenly considered how long Dave had been sitting, reading the menu, waiting, and wondering whether I ended up wandering on the highway outside somehow. I resolved to go back to my seat, Hellgazers or no. I wasn’t going to be a bad date, dammit.

I made it back to Dave without trouble this time, though he lets out a little yip as I approach to make sure I don’t mess up again and spontaneously combust from the insufferable pain of humiliation.

As I was in the midst of regaling Dave with the various narratives inside my head from my journey, the server approached to take our order. I caught us back up to speed by just ordering my usual fare. Dave places his order and when the server asks if there’s anything else, he inquires as to where the restrooms were. She instructs him toward the location of my near self-immolation – down the row and to the left until you see the painted doors. I shoot him a confused look.

Oh. He says. You know it kind of looks like that door there is a hallway and the bathrooms are down there. Maybe there should be better signs to help with that.

She smiles. Yeah. Actually that happens a lot – but no, they’re to the left.

He thanks her and takes a sip of his water, all casual like, and shoots me a half-grin. I look to my left to check the status of the Hellgazers only to find that they’ve left during the time I’ve been in the radius of Dave’s safety. He truly is enchanted.

This is just one such story of my adventures in society trying perform this basic, human task while in public. And so I shall declare and dub my lost-while-bathrooming saga The Restroom Chronicles. This is Part One. Long may the Chronicles reign, lest the day come that I do finally light myself on fire.

This image that I adore is by No Para Innita. If you like it too, check out their Flickr and MySpace

As I was poring over my blog drafts of Jacklyn Past to support my post-a-week throwdown, I unearthed a few old emails that I wrote long ago and inexplicably saved on my hard drive. ..Sometimes I write drafts of emails in Word before copying and pasting to Gmail because I’m a deeply awkward and burdened person in a variety of constantly shifting and exciting ways. While working my way through this thick brush of unnecessary digital recordkeeping, I found an old love letter to The Dave.

Sometimes living as a Type A – that is, one type in a personality theory that is characterized by drive, competition, and a predisposition for stress and heart disease – is burdensome. I would very much like to go to restaurants and not notice the plague of spelling errors that descends upon their menus instead of focusing on the detailed descriptions of food. I would like to, sometimes, be able to just shut the hell up instead of coaching myself to breathe and stay calm when someone asks a question to a group that I know the answer to. I would like to, from time to time, not express my deep and unabashed love for my partner in strange and seemingly robotic ways: by compiling organized and tabbed binders of his important papers, by completing detailed agendas and itineraries in advance of our travel dates, or by writing love notes like this one:

Dear love,

When I opened Chrome and went to Gmail on my computer today, your inbox automatically loaded – supposedly you forgot to log out before your last session. I noticed that it was full of unread messages from the same several companies – urban outfitters, banana republic, and a variety of other stores who have captured your email as you’ve shopped – all newsletters that you clearly don’t read which just pile up in your inbox. Meanwhile, notices from the light company that I remember you were hunting last month were buried unread among them.

I imagine it must be daunting. So I went ahead and opened one of each of the generic emails from spammy companies and unsubscribed. I did not unsubscribe to anything that was not a big box store or that was from a group that only emailed you occasionally just in case you wanted to keep getting updates from those.

I then did a filtered search for all the items from those places from which I unsubscribed, and marked all of them as “read” so that your inbox doesn’t look full all the time with things you’ll never read and which aren’t truly tasks. I didn’t delete them; I just marked them as read.

I then reconfigured your inbox into three separate sections, so that the top is reserved solely for unread messages, the second portion is flagged messages, and the third is everything else. Now you can read an email, move on if you don’t care, respond if you do, or flag it if you don’t have time but want to keep it visible.

I also enabled a coded flagging system so that you can mark a message with two different color stars (which can mean whatever you want), with an exclamation point (I demonstrated this by marking a few with it) or with a green check mark in case you want assurances that you completed something.

Anyway, I hope that you don’t find this invasive and that you’re relieved and this helps your workflow. You’ll see some old messages have moved to the top of your inbox now because once I got rid of all the spam or unread newsletters and marked it as read, it turned out you had very few emails of substance.

It might be easier to stay on top of things now. If not, I’m truly sorry. Please let me know how you honestly feel about this. I closed out and logged into my email to send this message so my fiddling session is complete.

I love you.

Jackie

For reasons I cannot fully explain, The Dave and I just reached nine years together and are going strong in spite of moments like the one you just beheld. If you, like me, are a Type A, you can take comfort in this artifact and my recent anniversary celebration, knowing there is probably love for you somewhere. Someone out there will translate your sorting of their email inbox into what you intend (butterflies, romance, sparklemagic). Somewhere out there is a partner who will smile lovingly at your madness and try really hard to be grateful for the systems that you constantly force on them through your oddly-formed love language.

And if you’re not one of the burdened in our society and can’t find it in yourself to see the romance in their gestures, I urge you to at least exercise compassion for their painful existences. You’ll only have to do it for a short time; with the stress and heart disease and all, you’re almost certain to outlive us.

]]>https://thejackieblog.com/2017/04/05/love-letter-from-a-type-a-millenial/feed/16jacklynmariebNo Para InnitaHalf Birthed Brain Sludgehttps://thejackieblog.com/2017/03/29/half-birthed-brain-sludge/
https://thejackieblog.com/2017/03/29/half-birthed-brain-sludge/#commentsWed, 29 Mar 2017 12:30:12 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=4916You know, the pressure of not posting for a long time never gets easier. And every time I write a post after there’s been a lull, I wonder if I need to recognize my time away or if that just leads to a series of posts that highlight my absence and make it worse (it does).

*breathes into a paper bag*

Okay listen. I’m going to get real here. I’m writing right now because for some inexplicable reason, people keep subscribing to this blog in spite of it only featuring a new post every 6 months or so with a half-realized promise to get back to it. Today, I checked my dusty old internet folder labeled ‘blog’ to find another handful of new hopefuls, and was reminded again that today could be the day I actually publish something. And hey: I’m on my second bowl of dinner Cocoa Puffs and feeling feisty, so here I am. I’m not going to think about whether I want to post this or not when I’m done. I’m just going to agree right here that no matter what half-birthed sludge pushes out of my brain, I’m going to publish it. Just like those good old days of the first 365 when I would write about myemergency underwear collectionbecause I just didn’t have anything else to work with and I needed to post. We’re going old school.

The fact is that I’ve written oodles of posts in the past several months, ducklings. Oodles of them. They’re all sitting on my desktop with various file names like “blogpost,” “newblogpost.” “forrealsiespost,” and “postthisyoumoron.” I’ve even done Lollipop Tuesdays that I’ve never posted about. Lots of them. Oh yes. I took a spinning class in one of those uber hip Crossfitty sorts of places with a full screen projection of a fake road and trees. And you better believe that when there was already sweat on the seat just from me sitting on it for the instructor to adjust it at the start of class – presumably my ass sweat from just existing – I thought about how much I wanted to tell you. I even GOT ON A PLANE THAT WENT ACROSS AN OCEAN. And that One Good Thing challenge I started for myself? It actually worked. I may have only posted three total times in the entirety of 2016, but I made some serious tweaks to my daily habits and I’m now a person who wakes up before work and actually cleans herself, does yoga, and reads things (whuuuuuut?) My life has been full of conquerings alongside anxiety-inducing wickedness and I’ve been keeping all the drafts of the proof on my desktop because, well, for some reason I’ve become weird about the blog.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the blog. The blog is the thing that has remedied a great many of my serious and deep human flaws. I still depend on the possibility of being able to post about terrifying and awkward experiences in order to get through said terrifying and awkward experiences.

But there has been a marked shift in my frequency of posting that aligns with my real life career.

Back when I started all this business, some of you oldest and wisest ducklings will recall that I was an overworked, overtired executive assistant who posted about a variety of work-related oddities I encountered in the corporate jungle, like work holiday parties andelevator moments. I had to wear professional, uptight clothes and do very big girl things, and having a blog to talk about how ridiculous all of that was really helped me survive those difficult years when I reported to a Gorgon. The beautiful thing about it all was that people at work didn’t know about the blog. In fact, very few people in my real life circle did. It made it really easy to get on here and blab about whatever and be my authentic, hyperbolic, anxiety-ridden self whilst maintaining a regular life and relationship with the people I actually had to encounter.

Then people started finding out. Like, real life people. Not you digital ducklings.

I used to have a very strict rule about not being friends with people I worked with on Facebook. I kept my digital life and my real life quite separate and that helped to distinguish a safe place to let the monsters in my head waddle around. That’s where I kept them: away from a real life place where I might have to talk about the blog or account for the things I’ve written in it to actual, real life people. But then I got out of the corporate jungle and started doing something I actually love: working in the arts. And I had friends in the arts. Like, lots of them. So I automatically was friends with and shared a digital presence with an enormous amount of people who were going to interact with me in my work life. Then I had to start helping with social media platforms at work, and friending people who it’s usually wise to keep some sense of decorum with. And suddenly I found myself with a hoard of posts that I would have published if only I didn’t have this filter that wondered if someone who I actually knew would read it. And if they would try to talk to me about it. Or maybe not talk to me about it and just judge me a whole lot for it and talk to other people about it. And if I would maybe defecate in my pants as a result.

I mean, I don’t really want to be running a board meeting and have a board member around the table who follows my blog so that even though I’m churning out some impressive year-over-year financial data analysis and I sound pretty confident, they know that the moment the meeting is over, I’m going to get lost trying to find the bathroom in the building and that the adventure could take thirty minutes if I get confused and anxious enough and that eventually I’ll have a blog post about it…which they will read.

There are two Jackies at war behind the scenes here. One is the Jackie who needs this blog to live a real, human life where she goes places and does things and has a place to talk about it – who needs it as her defense system against her natural, hermity, video-game-addicted state. The other is a Jackie who is hyper-aware of all the actual people with real faces that she’s seen who will read it and think about it and maybe ask her about it or have a different opinion of her for it and who can’t separate the difference between an online persona and a real life person. One of those Jackies has written a whole lotta posts and one of them never pushes publish.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on, friends. And because my brain is now wired in this MUST DEVOUR EVERY FEAR blogosphere persona, it’s simply impossible for me to hang on to these admissions too long without staring them in the face and figuring out how to beat them into submission. Since I’ve always brought you along for those sorts of rides, I thought I’d go head and continue that trend. At least I know that if I’m in a big important meeting and some big scary professional character makes mention of my little blog, I can come back to you guys and tell you all about how I soiled myself in public from anxiety. I mean, that’s what you’re here for. That’s why we’re here.

So I’m going to get over this hump, and in classic JackieBlog fashion, I’m going to create a challenge for myself to force it and pledge to post every single week for the rest of the year.

The shriveled up creative force in me wonders how I’ll possibly have anything to post about every single week, and the Jackiepants on me remind me that this whole damn thing was founded on writing without something specific to say. And hey, if I feel like I need material, I can just go hunt down a big juicy Lollipop Tuesday.

If you’re a writer of any kind and you’ve got your own slump to get through, why don’t you hop on board with me and pledge to write and share something every week? Challenges are my favorite.

The entire first quarter of the year is over, folks. Eddie Izzard ran 27 marathons in 27 days, Franky Zapata flew a Marty McFlyish hoverboard for over a mile, and Donald Trump has risen to become the harbinger of the Apocalypse. How’s it going for you?

I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing: sucking. Just sucking really hard.

Last we left off, I set out to make this year count by incorporating a variety of daily habits into my life until magically, by the end of the year, I would rise to the status of casual superhuman. Thus, I embarked on my annual self throwdown: this time to see whether it was possible to develop a host of superpowered daily habits like getting a good night’s sleep, waking up early, reading the news, drinking something hot, and thinking about my day.

Basically, my 2016 challenge is to become the dad in a nuclear family Sunday comic strip.

I’m not entirely sure those people actually exist – the ones who plan their slumbers, rise early like Ben Franklin, make themselves breakfast, plan out their day, send up a prayer of gratitude, and sacrifice a baby goat all before lunch. Maybe Michelle Obama or Beyoncé, but they probably have a staff aide for the baby goat thing.

All that bleating.

As for me, at this point I’ve picked up a good breakfast habit and everything else is a bit shaky. At one point I’d worked up to four habits simultaneously but I had to think and plan and work to incorporate them, and once I got truly busy they got packed right back into my knapsack of good intentions.

I don’t like to fail at things.

So it’s quarter two and I’m running this ship like a business; it’s time to change strategies and dive in.

Now this next part is going to sound like I’m selling something. You know, like when you’re cruising through your news feed and a friend posts a picture of themselves looking fabulous and you go to click that new, awkward “heart” reaction until you take a closer look at the tags and realize it’s a plug for a body sculpting system that ships green goop to your door for a low monthly fee.

You know what I’m talking about, yes? If not, all you really need to know is that one of the names of such hawked product is called Soylent. It markets itself as an affordable, complete nutrition meal replacement. SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUT OF PEOPLE!

Anyway this isn’t one of those. That was the point before I got all Charlton Heston on you.

My quarter two challenge is going to be something called the Whole Life Challenge (note to self: such a better title than One Good Thing). It’s basically everything I set out to do this year with my white boards and my tracking systems and my gamification of challenge attempts, but it costs fifty American dollars to do.

“But why would you do it if it’s basically the same, Jackie? Why would you give away your hard-earned nonprofit admin dollars?

Because I failed quarter one. And it looks like this whole “add a habit at a time and mark it on your white board before bed” thing isn’t working. I have the undereye bags of a woman twice my age. I’m starting to google neck exercises. I’ve even done some of them. It’s time.

Every day I’ll try to earn points by performing basic human functions. I will do this for 56 days. I’m not really sure what happens on Day 56. I’ll probably write a blog post because that seems to be in line with my 2016 consistency.

Sucking. Just sucking so hard.

I could also tend to these daily habits by joining the Amish (#backtothehomeland), but I’m probably going to need somewhere for this to go in quarter three and it’s been some time since I busted out a Lollipop Tuesday.

But let’s focus on the positives, shall we? I’ve begun to regularly eat a healthy breakfast. I’ll have eggs or cereal or toast instead of, you know, whatever strangely-shaped, dusty M&Ms I can find on the bottom of my purse on the way to work.

Four months to remember how to regularly eat breakfast. I had that down at age 6.

Of course back then it was a bowl of regular Cheerios with a mountain of white sugar I spooned on top.

So maybe I didn’t have that down at 6.

Twenty-nine years to get the breakfast thing down. Okay. That’s fine.

I’m going to go get my badass back. It all goes down on Saturday. I’m gonna throw down five Alexander Hamiltons, and maybe one more to snag myself a new set of aviators so I can feel like a boss while I’m drinking water and reading the daily news.

Quarter two. Let’s roll.

]]>https://thejackieblog.com/2016/05/03/prepare-the-goat-altar/feed/18jacklynmariebThe Death of Jabbahttps://thejackieblog.com/2016/02/01/the-death-of-jabba/
https://thejackieblog.com/2016/02/01/the-death-of-jabba/#commentsMon, 01 Feb 2016 12:00:00 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=4777I’m christening February with a brand new shiny post. Since that’s the most I’ve written in 3 months, I’m going to go buy and eat an entire pack of Oreos in celebration.

Now – last month I threw down (as I often do) and made much of my obsession with resolutions and goal-setting. It left some folks wondering what exactly I was going to do for the year if I was parading around trying to get everyone else do to things. Behold: the plan.

It’s all here on this blog – it’s chronicled. Extreme highs and lows. I lose 30 pounds and am fitter than I’ve ever been in my life then I’m half naked on my couch buried in Skittles. I’m a human machine, then I have to attach fly papers throughout my apartment because I haven’t cleaned in so long that my potatoes are self-imploding in the kitchen. I don’t post for three months, I post twice in a row and eat a whole pack of Oreos. For all my self-discipline, I’m unbelievably undisciplined.

Now, granted, I have made some meaningful and real change in my life as a result of sharing my degradation and my paralyzing, anxiety-filled monologue with you all. But in the midst of all these highs and lows and personal achievements, I’ve continually wondered what a well-balanced life looks like.

Are there people who actually meditate every day? Who manage to eat breakfast every day without counting M&Ms? Somewhere out there, are there humans who have drawers of clean underwear and can touch their toes all year? Can balance be learned?

Let’s face it folks – if I can’t do it before the babies start falling out of my body then it will never happen. Because you know what my babies will want to do? Sit around half naked and eat Skittles. I’ll be doomed to live this way forever and to create an entire line of humans who do the same.

So that’s the ultimate goal for the year: to experience a well-balanced life in order to save myself from sending my defective seed into the future thereby dooming my entire lineage. Now, as you studious jackieblog pupils will recall, that’s not really an actionable goal. We need specifics- things that I can concretely accomplish on a daily basis. Numbers. Expectations. Measurable outcomes. It’s sciencey and stuff.

(You can hop on board if you want. It’s never too late. That’s a rule here. There aren’t many but the few we have are legit. In fact, check out this rock star over at FattieGettingFit who began her journey on Jan. 27th. It’s not too late in the year, and it’s definitely never too late in your life.)

So here’s the plan.

The “One Good Thing” Challenge

Make a list of habits you wish you had or believe that you would have if you were your best self. Make them reasonable and beneficial long-term.

Hold each habit at least 7 days. You can’t move on unless you can envision adding a new habit without being overwhelmed.

You cannot move on early and all habits must be additive, not subtractive. Not doing something is not a habit. (that’s a good thing to remember for life in general.)

Reward yourself along the way at whatever intervals you please and with whatever rewards you find meaningful.

That’s it. Seems like it should work, right?

Here are a few examples of good things I personally think that doing every single day would help make me a more balanced, healthy version of myself:

Eating breakfast

Flossing

Prayer/Meditation

Exercise/Stretching

Sleep for 8 hours (this is the most unfathomable for me)

Moisturize

Sending a note to someone I care about

Doing something creative

My list goes on. It’s big. I don’t even brush my hair every day.

My rewards list is also big because I plan to kick this squarely in the ass.

I started by picking one and doing it every day, no excuses. The deal is that I have to maintain it for 7 days straight. If I make it to day 6 and miss a day, I start again as if it’s my first day trying to do that habit. It’s okay if I spend half the year making an effort to eat breakfast every day. At least after 6 months I’ll be eating breakfast every day. Once I get two habits in the bucket, I cash in on a reward.

I started at the beginning of January and I’m 3 habits deep. I’ve eaten breakfast every single day (perhaps a lifetime record at this point), worked out/stretched for at least 5 minutes first thing in the morning, and moisturized every day. I’m working on adding prayer/mediation. So far I’ve discovered the seemingly obvious: that the easier I make it for these things to happen naturally, the more likely they are to happen. I have a yoga mat and weights right beside my bed ready to go so that in the morning all I have to do is convince myself to roll over and start stretching. That usually leads to a little exercise. And that usually leads to me wanting breakfast. Sure – it’s just 5 minutes of movement and a breakfast sandwich now, but by the end of the year, who knows? I could be going for a long morning stroll to see the sun rise, get a cup of coffee and a newspaper (which I’ll presumably make time to read), and make myself Eggs Benedict before work. It will be a page straight out of Real Simple magazine.

I’ve been able to manage all right thus far, but I have to admit I’m having a hard time imagining getting too much farther. Sleeping eight hours every single night hasn’t happened since 3rd grade. That’s on the list. And sooner or later I’m going to have to come to terms with how to make it happen. I’m afraid I’m going to have to let some things go. I do a lot of my work while everyone else is sleeping. Like this blog post which I’m writing at 1AM and auto-scheduling for the following morning.

So that’s the plan, folks. 2016 is the year I figure out what balance looks like so that in 2017 I can determine whether or not it’s all just a load of horse manure and go back to my night owlish, junk food injecting, willy-nilly ways with no regrets. I’ve got 11 months to go in my next human self-experiment. Yeeeeehaw.

Psst: I have a long list of ideas for daily habits, but I could use more. What do you think is a daily habit of a well-balanced person? Let me know in the comments and help me to abandon my Jabba the Hut-like ways.

]]>https://thejackieblog.com/2016/02/01/the-death-of-jabba/feed/20jacklynmarieb'jabba' by cplbasilisk, released on Flickr under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), found via WylioHow to Make 2015 Your Final Sucky Yearhttps://thejackieblog.com/2015/12/31/2015finalsuck/
https://thejackieblog.com/2015/12/31/2015finalsuck/#commentsThu, 31 Dec 2015 13:00:00 +0000http://thejackieblog.com/?p=4760

New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap. This week, radio show hosts all over the country laughed haughtily at the thought that America would stuff into gyms across the nation for one solid month, only to trickle off to the actual gym-goers (the ones who were there before the New Year) by February.

It appears that as a society we’ve become accustomed to making light of our supposed inability to find the time, energy, or resolve to – well – have resolve.

I think that’s a real bummer, man. We’re better than that. And all our sitting around reaffirming each other’s mediocrity isn’t doing us (or the human race at large) any favors. Why do we do that? Probably because it’s cozy. I know from personal experience that it’s far more comfortable to sit on the couch with my fat rolls tucked into my underwear playing video games and eating the entire box of macaroni and cheese than it is to announce my intention to do otherwise and then act on it.

That last part is key – the acting on it part. You usually have to put on pants for that.

This is about more than going to the gym, though that tends to be the most common resolution. This is about taking control of your year, and consequently, your life. If that means gym visits and personal health, so be it. It probably means something else.

How was 2015 for you? What happened?

For me it was pretty terrible, all things considered. It was full of cancer and seizures and suicide. It brought job losses and emotional turbulence and big, difficult moves. It wasn’t a repeater for me, you know, if I have my way and all. But I don’t measure my years by what happened to me; I can’t control any of that. Instead, I measure my years by what I did and how I navigated them. And part of that is whether I accomplished my resolution.

How many times have you thought about what a waste of life it seems to be to work, sleep, and pass away? Have you ever considered that you work your entire life for the promise of retirement and that by the time you retire, you don’t really have the friends, income, or energy to do the things you imagined you’d do? How often have you thought about all the things you would make time for or do or improve upon if or when you have the time to do it?

The nice thing about a new year is that it’s an easily defined point in time. It’s an obvious and complete cycle. It’s an opportunity for you to acknowledge the level of suck you have in a specific area and vow to improve upon it in a concrete way by the next year. It doesn’t have to be a time to mock how we’ll probably never change. It can be a time to authentically reflect on whether you’ve grown as person – and it should be.

You don’t have to declare some monumental achievement. You could try to progressively get better at something (dancing), or take on a specific adventure (go to another country). You could try every day to do one very simple and small thing consistently so that by the end of the year you’ve formed a real habit (eat breakfast when you wake up). Whatever it is, make it something that speaks to the voice in the back of your brain that yoinks at you and says you should do it and that you’d be happier, healthier, and prouder if you did. If you’re not a newcomer to resolution-making, then you should go big. Go scary. Pick the undoable and figure out how to do it. Those ones are my favorite.

It’s fine to be worried or afraid. There’s a reason you haven’t been able to do whatever the thing is yet. Maybe it’s hard to find the time or the energy or the courage. But you’re going to. And it all starts with finding the thing, calling it out, and acknowledging that you seriously suck at it.

There are a variety of ways you can go about this, friends, and while I don’t have any failsafe map for you, I do have a few suggestions. I have maps for 1-Day Challenges, 30-Day Challenges, and Year-Long Challenges up there in my handy dandy menu on the right (How to Suck Less). There isn’t any one right way to go about personal growth, but there’s definitely a wrong way and it’s to stay stagnant. You could make this the year that you rekindle an old, lost friendship. Or the year that you finally sorted through everything in your attic. You could trace your ancestry or join a club. I’ve used my recent years to conquer crippling anxiety, to do new and terrifying things to make my life more interesting and filled to the brim with stories, and to run 10Ks and half marathons. I can tell you with certainty that the years that I sought out to do something specific were filled with intention and mindfulness and growth. And the years that I didn’t were dark and dull and wasted.

This may beg the question of what I’m signing up for this year, but I’m going to wait on that. I’ve got my plan and I have every intention of executing it. But for now let’s focus on you. Don’t worry about starting exactly on the 1st, either. Your year starts when you say it does. Take the time that you need to genuinely assess yourself, your inhibitions, and your wants. Find something measurable and set up the goal posts. Then move. Reflect. Move. Reflect. Growth is inevitable.

It’s time you took control of your life, don’t you think? Next year you should tell the story of what you did with your time, not of what happened to you. And don’t worry – if you feel like giving up, think you don’t have the time or energy to keep on keepin’ on, or if you massively fall on your face – you’ve always got my saga here, chronicled in great and embarrassing detail for either encouragement or commiseration. Start small, or go big. Do you. But certainly do something.

Last year could be the very last year that you sucked. If you want it to be.